No other man, unless it was Doc Hill, Did more for people in this town than l. And all the weak, the halt, the improvident And those who could not pay flocked to me. I was good-hearted, easy Doctor Meyers. I was healthy, happy, in comfortable fortune, Blest with a congenial mate, my children raised, All wedded, doing well in the world.
Why did my parents send me to the schools That I with knowledge might enrich my mind? Since the desire to know first made men fools, And did corrupt the root of all mankind.
Est brevitate opus, ut currat sententia, neu se Impediat verbis lassas onerantibus aures: Et sermone opus est modo tristi, saepe jocoso, Defendente vicem modo Rhetoris atque Poetae, Interdum urbani, parcentis viribus, atque Extenuantis eas consulto. (Horace, Satires, I, x, 17-22)
Where are Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom and Charley, The weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer, the fighter? All, all are sleeping on the hill.
One passed in a fever, One was burned in a mine, One was killed in a brawl, One died in a jail,
When the corn’s all cut and the bright stalks shine Like the burnished spears of a field of gold; When the field-mice rich on the nubbins dine, And the frost comes white and the wind blows cold; Then its heigho fellows and hi-diddle-diddle, For the time is ripe for the corn-stalk fiddle.
And you take a stalk that is straight and long, With an expert eye to its worthy points, And you think of the bubbling strains of song That are bound between its pithy joints— Then you cut out strings, with a bridge in the middle, With a corn-stalk bow for a corn-stalk fiddle.
These are the lines on which a committee is formed. Almost as soon as work was begun in the tunnel men began to die among dry drills. No masks. Most of them were not from this valley. The freights brought many every day from States all up and down the Atlantic seaboard and as far inland as Kentucky, Ohio. After the work the camps were closed or burned.
Once Phidias stood, with hammer in his hand, Carving Minerva from the breathing stone, Tracing with love the winding of a hair, A single hair upon her head, whereon A youth of Athens cried, “O Phidias, Why do you dally on a hidden hair? When she is lifted to the lofty front Of the Parthenon, no human eye will see.”
Tempora labuntur, tacitisque senescimus annis, Et fugiunt freno non remorante dies. Ovid, Fastorum, Lib. vi. "O Cæsar, we who are about to die Salute you!" was the gladiators' cry In the arena, standing face to face With death and with the Roman populace.
Proem. Although great Queen, thou now in silence lie, Yet thy loud Herald Fame, doth to the sky Thy wondrous worth proclaim, in every clime, And so has vow’d, whilst there is world or time. So great’s thy glory, and thine excellence, The sound thereof raps every human sense That men account it no impiety To say thou wert a fleshly Deity. Thousands bring off’rings (though out of date) Thy world of honours to accumulate. ‘Mongst hundred Hecatombs of roaring Verse, ‘Mine bleating stands before thy royal Hearse. Thou never didst, nor canst thou now disdain, T’ accept the tribute of a loyal Brain.
I should be dumb before thee, feathered sage! And gaze upon thy phiz with solemn awe, But for a most audacious wish to gauge The hoarded wisdom of thy learned craw.
Art thou, grave bird! so wondrous wise indeed? Speak freely, without fear of jest or gibe— What is thy moral and religious creed?
Go wailing verse, the infants of my love, Minerva-like, brought forth without a Mother: Present the image of the cares I prove, Witness your Father’s grief exceeds all other. Sigh out a story of her cruel deeds, With interrupted accents of despair: A monument that whosoever reads, May justly praise, and blame my loveless Fair. Say her disdain hath dried up my blood, And starved you, in succours still denying: Press to her eyes, importune me some good; Waken her sleeping pity with your crying. Knock at that hard heart, beg till you have moved her; And tell th’unkind, how dearly I have loved her.
In early youth’s unclouded scene, The brilliant morning of eighteen, With health and sprightly joy elate, We gazed on youth’s enchanting spring, Nor thought how quickly time would bring The mournful period — thirty-eight!
Then the starch maid, or matron sage, Already of the sober age,
He protested all his life long The newspapers lied about him villainously; That he was not at fault for Minerva's fall, But only tried to help her. Poor soul so sunk in sin he could not see That even trying to help her, as he called it, He had broken the law human and divine. Passers by, an ancient admonition to you:
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